Along with the "does chicken burn" I know put your hand on the fryer and tell me!!

They do a couple of terms of cookery in year 7 and 8 but they don't get very far. Basic pizza and fruit crumbles. If you really want to learn you have to practice at home. This is a skill that should be passed on by parents.

Agreed, I did cooking from primary school, simple things like scones etc, right through to GCSE, but yes it should be the parents too, that help in the learning. But with parents like Fran, there's no hope.

A lot of people nowadays seem to almost boast about their inability to cook and take a pride in telling people 'oh I just eat out/microwave something'; almost as if cooking is too trivial and boring for busy, successful people to bother about.

How can it be a waste of time and effort to do something that ensures you won't be living on quick convenience food loaded with salt, sugar and saturated fat, increasing your chances of developing diabetes, heart disease or cancer?

And why would anyone 'despise' cooking? What an odd statement.

I did some quite complex things actually. I designed a new recipe, which was a new kind of mushroom stroganoff with quorn (I'd just recently become vegetarian at that point)... it was really nice! Quite proud of that. Obviously they have to be simple enough to be able to cook in one double lesson (so two hours) but I did quite a lot that was more complex than scones!

I've taught myself to cook. At my school we rarely did any cookery and the only things I can remember making are pizza, fairy cakes and flap jacks. When my mum was at school she learned how to cook a roast dinner! I think now schools tend to focus solely on academic subjects, but life skills are just as important.

I was being facetious with the ''waste of time and effort'' bit, really, it was just a daft comment. Obviously it's an important life skill that everyone ought to learn (cooking, not being facetious, that is.) Probably should have put a smiley in to show I was being silly.

As for despising cooking, well, I just do. It's boring and I have no interest in it. That's not odd to me in the slightest, as not everybody enjoys doing the same things. Some people really get into it, and like making up recipes, etc. Good for them. My fiance's a masterchef type and loves all this sort of stuff. He and I take turns making dinner, which is only fair considering that we both work full-time. I just don't enjoy it. Never have. I find watching paint dry more interesting than chucking ingredients in a pan.


Er, no dear. I said I hate doing it, not that I never do it. We take turns making meals in this house. Doh.

I can cook (God knows we did enough in school), but I just can't stand it. I don't have the patience to prepare and cook a full meal. Luckily, house mates cook (and I'll wash up after). But if I do need to cook, I can.

Cooking should be taught in schools and enhanced and practiced at home.

You'd think that given there is always at least one task involving cooking, they at least learn some basics before popping along for the interview.

I knew it wasn't just me!

I think cooking's more fun if you're the kind of person that really feels hungry sometimes or really has a need to make something. Or if you have a good routine in place.

While I do enjoy cooking, I don't do it that often. Then again, that is mostly down to being poor and not being particularly hungry very often, haha. My mum was a chef so I do have an appreciation for food though and I would cook when I visit my parents.

I would find it hard to live off ready meals. I know some people who do (students) but I find personally if I eat fast food or things without vegetables for too long in a row I feel a bit sick and have to eat healthy food.

Am shocked at her not knowing chicken burns though but then again Alexa in series 2 did order a chicken per pizza....

It was actually Syed that did that... it was Alexa's team, but Syed that screwed up the order...

What you did that when you were like 6 or 7

I had 3 years of Home Economics in secondary school (late 90s) so I learned to cook a few basic things at that point.

University turned me into an experimenter when it came to food though.

Only thing I really should learn is making sauces from scratch rather than jars or packets but I can cook enough to survive.

Having said that, with the exception of traybakes I can't bake to save my life.

No, of course not! I was about 15. I didn't realise you were just talking about primary school. My comment was in response to you saying, 'I did cooking - simple things like scones - right through to GCSE'. That implies that there is never anything more complex than that.

LOL, yes scones when I was like 6 or 7, going on to more complex things later on when I did GCSE's

Sorry, that wasn't clear.

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this.

Too cool to cook. Almost as if it's beneath them. Reality check desperately in need.

I don't love cooking myself but being able to feed yourself with basic foods is surely a life skill worthwhile acquiring.

I'm 22 and had weekly cooking and nutrition lessons both in school and cooked at home with my mum from a young age. I was shocked when the girls said they never cooked! Yes they may be busy people but surely somewhere along the line they've managed to get a handle on cooking basics.

Don't know about anyone else, but for me it's nothing to do with being ''cool'' (starving oneself is hardly an indicator of one's status or success, really ) or anything as stupid, pathetic and vacuous as that; I am not 14 years old, despite my daft comment a couple of days ago.

I think it's important that every human adult knows how to feed oneself and has enough grasp of cooking skills to be able to do so. I think some people really enjoy it and others don't, and that there is nothing wrong with either. I'm one who doesn't. I lived on my own from the time I was 17 until I moved in with my fiance at 25, so learned the basics earlier than most of my friends of both sexes, who were living at home and didn't have a clue how to boil an egg!

Personally I've never had any interest in cooking whatsoever, other than to be able to create something healthy and filling enough to survive on. It bores me to tears and I absolutely hate it. Obviously one ought to know how to do it or they'll end up thoroughly dependent on some other poor soul, ill from an unhealthy diet, or starving to death. I don't fancy any of the above so I take turns with The Fiance to sort out our daily meals. Of course being able to feed oneself is important, that doesn't make it less mindnumbingly dull for me.

That said. I was surprised when Francesca didn't know how to make a stir fry, it's not exactly difficult to figure out, and this coming from someone who is definitely not a domestic goddess and has no wish to be. The ''does chicken burn?'' thing really was excruciatingly stupid. I'm not a great cook (to put it mildly), but if I was that dim I'd be thoroughly embarrassed!

There is a huge difference between not enjoying cooking getting to adulthood and not being able to cook at all.

I'd call the latter Princess Syndrome.

I'd just call it sheer laziness, really, which applies to both sexes.

Er...do you want to have a wee rethink about this comment?

Maybe if you'd taken the full quote in its context rather than editing bits out of it, which changed it's meaning, it would have made more sense to you?

I was on about the suggestion that not being able to cook makes one feel they are ''cool'', which in my opinion, really IS a pathetic excuse for someone to give for not being able to boil an egg.